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As the month comes to a close, I am reminded that I intended to write a short reflection on this past year, which ended up being full of change and upheaval, both professionally and personally.

Over 2024, I spent 2 months with my wife and daughter in Greece, I started doing paid consulting work, I had just finished my first paid work with O’Reilly, and what I wanted out of my next phase in life began to crystallize.

Then, in October, the floor fell out. I’m no stranger to pivots, layoffs, seismic shifts, and betting big on myself, but unexpectedly being let go when you’re the sole breadwinner in your family is a whole different test of your mettle.

Within a week, I was also notified that a paid project I was on lost funding. 2 major income streams drying up nearly simultaneously is objectively not a good time.

So I started interviewing, mostly to avoid that little voice that was telling me to finally make that move I had been wanting to make, that urge that I struggled to even identify for several years (despite devouring books like The Nomadic Developer (ref link)), but had finally worked out: to strike it out on my own as a technology consultant.

As I was wrestling with this frankly nutso idea, several people reached out to me with work offers that could actually make consulting on my own possible. Despite all the headwinds - family, debt, bills, imposter syndrome - I was thrust forward, inexorably and by some force seemingly outside of myself, to take the plunge.

Suddenly, I have fractional offers from people to whom I am forever grateful, I’m meeting (in real life!) friends and people I admire professionally that I only interacted with online, random, fascinating people building cool stuff get on calls with me to nerd out about what we’re working on and work out ways we can support each other’s work and encourage each other through our professional (and life) journeys.

The communities I have been a part of, and those that I joined when I finally made this decision really showed out. I can’t stress enough how important professional communities are as a source of support, a place to vent, and a place to make friends who share interests. The Tribe AI community Slack, Chip Huyen’s MLOps Discord and Benjamin Rogojan’s Technical Freelancer Academy, along with a few private startup alumni chats, were quick to offer support, work leads, and camaraderie.

By the turn of the year, I had began an open-ended part-time contract with Tribe AI, working with a team I truly enjoy working and hanging out with (and with any luck, will be meeting up with this spring!), I finalized another one with Metron Farnier (another wonderful team I’m privileged to work with), wrapped up my second Report for O’Reilly (keep an eye out for that in a few months!), begun two book pitches, and, surprisingly, was invited back to Greece to spend another couple of months there.

But Kyle, you are definitely saying right now, none of this is really reflective! It mostly just sounds like a humblebrag! And you promised this would be short!

My response to you and my own anxiety is that you’re half-right, but the reflections are coming. I know this is a feast-or-famine way to work, and I’m sure there will be low points, speed bumps, and difficulties to come, but I wanted to lay all this out to meditate on all the major changes that happened this year and, more importantly, the people who got me from January 1st, 2024 to December 31, 2024. As I reflect on all of this, one word repeats endlessly in my mind: gratitude.

Gratitude for relatives that open up their home in Greece to me, my wife, and my toddler. Gratitude for the family and friends I met for the first time living there, who made me and my family feel like we were home, like we were where we belonged. Gratitude for being canned. Gratitude for my village - for my friends and colleagues and professional acquaintances who did their utmost to help me land on my feet and figure out my next steps. Gratitude for an ever-patient wife and a daughter that still sees me as a superhero (specifically Batman, for some reason) who took all this risk right with me with no complaints, pushback, or anything that would hamper achieving this dream. Gratitude for a temporary suspension of my more typical risk aversion.

Still more gratitude for the resources I had available: for Mihai-Valentin Curelea’s course, for the Technical Freelancer Academy teaching me the logistics of getting and landing contracts. Gratitude for those who had engaged me while I was working full-time, who took a bet on me, pointed me in the direction I had always been pulled in but couldn’t see, who mentored me, and who gave me confidence in a way they weren’t even aware of. Gratitude for being able to do something I truly love and get paid actual dollars for it.

I feel incredibly lucky, and I get a bit verklempt thinking of all the disparate people, many of whom I’ve only ever met online or worked with only briefly or even worked with for a long time, who came together and threw their support behind me in any way they could. Many of you reading this fall into that camp, and though I didn’t name many names (do you know how much I’d overanalyze who to include?), thank you I love you (now say it back or it’s weird).

Also, want to work together? Check out Stratis Data Labs and let’s chat!